Eyewitness testimony only works when their account fits with whatever evidence they have.
As I stated before, there will be people who attest to have seen Allah, and those who attest to have seen the hindu gods, and those who attest to have seen any number of crazy things.
Now how can we know which is real? You can say the people who have seen the Hindu gods are crazy and dillusional, but they could turn right around and say the same thing to you.
Our brains are far from perfect. We tend to see what we want to see. And if we REALLY wanted to believe in something, chances are our brain will make it happen in some way.
So once again, you can believe in God if you want, but you cant actually make a case that one exists. Saying that we ourselves are verifiable proof doesnt mean anything, as we can look to Evolution to see how we eventually came about.

 

Much as I care for most of the people / Avatar's .. on this site [ Forum - GD] ..there is an over abundance of WEIRD ...
Makes me feel right at home...

 

I can't see him. Is my eyesight not as good as yours? Next time you see him, could you take a photograph?

There are people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Lots of them, in fact. Do you believe them? Would their testimony have any weight in a courtroom?

 

When I said there are people that can give witness to miraculous events, I meant verifiable events that occurred but have no logical or scientific explanation. I'm sure you are aware that there are at least hundreds of such events., Whether these events were caused by God or not is a question of faith, however they do serve to remind us that there is much that we do not know, understand or can explain using current knowledge.

God, if we give that term a very basic definition, such as an eternal power that is the source of all creation, can go by many names. That each religion call Him by a different name is not that strange. Even the earth, the planets and the sun go by different names in various cultures and nationalities. The culture of science calls such an entity a Quantum Singularity. That is, a thing that has always existed, can not be created or destroyed and is the source of everything that exist today. No one has ever seen a Quantum Singularity but science assures us that it is real and it is the source of all creation including time and space.

I have a good grasp of the theory of evolution and I agree with most of it. I depart form the theory in one basic respect. At it's core evolution says that change happened by chance. I believed it happened by design.

As an illustration of my views, I would like to sight the example of the development of an embryo into a human being. We all start off as a one celled creature swimming in a sea of water. That one cell is infused with a blueprint that is provided by the parents that created it. Following the blueprint, that one cell grows into millions of identical cells who eventually begin to differentiate and form themselves into varied parts that work together to create the human body. We know that all happens by design because we know and understand the process. However, if this process was viewed by an outsider, (say a race of aliens with a different life process.) after seeing the development of a baby for the first time, and then studying that process; having no knowledge of the existence of the parents, they would have to logically conclude that the process that caused that original single cell to change and transform itself into a human being, occurred as a result of a series of mutations. There could be no other explanation..

If I asked those outsiders to believe that a parent organism placed within that original cell's nucleus, very tiny intertwined stands called chromosomes which in turned contained even smaller DNA packets of proteins and acids that somehow contained a very complicated set of instructions and programing that were responsible for the changes and development of the original cell, they would find that hard to believe. Naturally, they would ask me to produce for their inspection the parent organism. If I could do that they would then ask who created the parent organisms and we would have to trace the whole process back to the Quantum Singularity.

I'm sorry that I have to go now and have no time to edit or correct the above example. I hope you can understand it as it is. If not, please ask.

HD.

 

Good lord. Natural selection is kinda CORE to the theory of evolution. If you disbelieve natural selection, then you disbelieve evolution.

 

I'm sure some guy called Jesus existed somewhere at somepoint in time yes.

Was he the son of God? I very much doubt it, but it worked wonders for controlling the populace in many countries for many years.

The ol' book makes me giggle though, i'd love to congratulate the person that "God" came to and told exactly what he said and what he made and when. He was one lucky beotch.

 

That's alot to respond to, and I'll let Kimiko take a crack at it, as I was up all last night studying for an exam, but I will say this.
If something unexplainable or illogical happens, a lot of people like to believe it was supernatural, but that's a fallacy. The unexplained is just that, unexplained. For you to say it's proof of God is basically saying "I dont know how this happened, therefore I know how this happened."

 

I agree, only, typing out long responses is beyond me at the moment so all i will say is... +1!!

 

Many things used to be beyond the understanding of human beings, and were assigned to the category of miracles, or magic, or acts of God...and now these things can be fully explained. The province of God has retreated steadily over time, as science has gradually unearthed the truth behind these mysteries (opposed by the organized religion, usually). Many mysteries still remain, but to assume that because science has not yet resolved them, it never will, flies in the face of history. Moreover, to assume that whatever is currently not understood or explained is proof of the existence of God is simply to employ a non sequitur.

 

There in my little mutt lies the error in your thinking ...
................. however, since you are the'' lady of eminence'' on XNXX; I will not burst your bubble ...
I am Canadian, I have a Queen ......
I do love so looking up to a woman... :rose::twisted:

 

Your response jumps to conclusions that don't follow logically from anything I said. The part of my statement that you quoted contains no assumptions nor does it call for any conclusions.


How can we have an intelligent conversation when you deliberately misunderstand and misrepresent what I'm saying. Is the objective here to win an argument or search for truth?


If you are going to lecture me on the reliability of scientific knowledge, then you should know that scientific exploration often opens up more questions than it answers. AND HERE IS MY POINT. the answers it does uncover are often even more mystifying than the original questions it was trying to answer. For example, in an effort to try and find the elemental building blocks of creation, they now believe they have uncovered the existence of overlapping, multiple dimensions.


As unbelievably large as our universe is reported to be, they now believe there are Universes within universes... all occupying the same space at the same time. And... I don't really want to get into this right now but just in passing I'd like to mention that scientist are not only looking at outer space, but they are actively engaged in the exploration of inner space, or the micro universe.


While some would think that we have amassed a huge amount of knowledge, most scientist will tell you that we are only scratching the surface of the great unknown. However, what we do know paints a picture of the universe that is so complex that about half the scientist think that it is too complex to have evolved on its own and about half of the world's scientist believe in God. Not necessarily the God presented by religion, but an intelligent creative force that is the cause of all creation.


Amidst all the strange and wondrous things that are known and the wonders that are yet to be discovered, you still hold that within the infinitely vast multi-verse, the existence of God is impossible? How marvelously presumptuous or you! Or, as Shakespeare might have said, "...There are more things in heaven and earth, Kimico, Than are dreamt of in your self limiting philosophy."

HD :rose:

 

Isn't that what I said?

 

Sorry, HD. I must have missed that. So you don't believe in Evolution by natural selection. How did the variety of species we see on Earth come to be, then?

(If you explained your position earlier int he thread, my apologies but could you point me int he right area as there's an awful lot of this to trawl through to find it. Ta.)

 

First of all, I didn't say that the existence of God is impossible...I just don't think it's necessary to invoke a creator as an explanation for what we observe.

And even if I accept your estimate that half of all scientists DO believe in some sort of supernatural creator (which I seriously doubt is the case), that means that scientists as a group are far LESS likely to believe in a creator than the public as a whole.

Do you deny that many of the things that were mysteries to our ancestors, and thus assigned to the realm of the supernatural, are now understood as a result of scientific inquiry?

 

He's never heard of Brian Dunning, I'm sure.

 

Or The Amazing Randi...

 

They're obviously both in the pay of Big Pharma and Big Oil and Big Atheist (That would be Christopher Hitchens, I assume).

 

*laughing* How come I never see YOU at the meetings of Big Atheist?

 

Because I take off the man suit. I'm the lizard at the back running things by mind control.

 

Notice there were no smileys to indicate that my last post was a joke. I'm just saying.